[ianburrell]

In addition to coal that I mentioned above, it should be possible to have industrial society with renewables. It wouldn’t be as high energy as ours or as industrialized. But if they knew the science and some technology they could skip the big iron phase.

Early power could come from burning wood and windmills. That doesn’t have enough power for smelting iron, but there is more than lots of iron, Electricity could come from concentrated solar, wind, hydro, or geothermal. Nuclear would be the big jump.